The March Issue of Conde Nast Traveler has an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Alik, a Somali-Dutch feminist who, now an atheist, was once a devout Muslim. She is best known for her criticism of Islam’s treatment of women. Her assessment of the mistakes of the west in dealing with Islam and Muslims is as follows:
We conflated Islam with Muslims. Muslims are just like everybody else. But Islam is a political ideology. It has a component of faith and spirituality, and also a very strong political dimension. It’s expansionist and totalitarian in the way it tries to govern every aspect of life…
If we can separate the doctrine from the adherents, then we can challenge the agents of radical Islam. Let’s assume that individual Muslims can be persuaded to see the shortcomings of Islam as a political theory. Jihad, conflating religion with government, ranking people into believers and nonbelievers - all of that is only going to lead to violations of human rights. Where sharia, or Islamic law, is implemented, you see all these things: cutting off of limbs, beheadings, stonings, oppressive tyranny, women being told to stay in the hose, dictating whom you should or should not see.
Now, I think Ali is correct in her assessment of Islam and Muslims. Certainly, Muslims are individual human beings, each worthy of complete respect and dignity due to their creation in God’s image. Not all Muslims subscribe to the full teachings of the Q’uran and therefore not all are radical Islamic fundamentalists. I have good personal Muslim friends who are wonderful human beings who are tolerant of the religious beliefs of others. Ali accurately implies, however, that the evil actions of the radical Muslims does follow directly from the teachings of the Q’uran. In answer to the question of whether a good Muslim can then act in a way which honors human rights, she replies:
Yes, on the condition that when a conflict arises between a Koranic command and the conscience of a Muslim, he chooses to follow his conscience. If the Koran says throw a stone and your conscience says don’t do it, and you don’t then I’d say you are a compassionate, liberal human.
The problem with Ali’s appeal to compassionate, liberal humanism is that she has no convincing argument as to why anyone should pay any attention to what she says. An athiest speaking on universal human rights is oxymoronic. For an atheist, there are no universal human rights. There is only what is. One man’s claim to a right to mutilate, torture, and terrorize is morally equivalent to another’s right to treat others with kindness and compassion. No ultimate authority is present to arbitrate between these claims. There are no universal human rights without some grounding authority such as the God of Christian theism. Her talk of human rights, liberality, and following one’s conscience is meaningless on a naturalistic worldview.
Along these lines, when asked why we should impose our western culture onto Islamic societies, Ali responded:
What’s wrong with that reasoning is that when you say “my culture,” you are limiting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the west. You are saying, “freedom is not universal; it’s just for us. They are entitled to their backwardness, to their misogyny. Those human beings there, they can be tortured; that’s fine because its their culture. Genital mutilation, that’s their thing. The Chinese can lock up their dissidents, and its all fine.” It’s my conviction that there are no Arab or Chinese or African or American categories of human rights. There are universal human rights.
While I appreciate the work Ali has done to stand up for human rights and agree with her assessment that all humans are deserving of equal rights, I don’t understand why anyone would pay any attention to a thing she has to say unless she can offer some grounding for these rights, other than her opinion or preference as to how things ought to be. The founders of this country understood that without God, universal human rights do not exist. The Declaration of Independence argues that:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…
Universal human rights can only be secured when society and culture acknowledges the existence of the Divine Creator from whom those rights are derived.